Brittany and I finished wrapping up all our loose ends and got to sleep at about 2:30. Not a great way to start a trip with our kids, but it could have been worse! We got up at 5:00 and were out the door by a quarter to 6:00. The check-in process went really well. The worry on these trips when you’re checking in a lot of make-shift boxes is if the counter agent is a stickler. For example, the largest package you can send on an airline without paying oversized fees is 62 inches, that’s width plus length plus height. Bikewagon had a perfect box for this, and all the boxes besides the two bikes we needed to send were within that range. We sent two Lapierre folding bikes for Matt and his Wife, and those boxes contain a folding bike and a front wheel. The edges adhere to the 62 inch rule, but the middle sticks out a bit. They let us check all the boxes without any issues or extra fees. It’s hard to know how much the boxes could be abused in transit, so you really just gotta send them off with a prayer and hope they shop up safe!

We got some Cafe Rio for breakfast, and after a quick exchange at the ticketing counter re-arranged our seats so we could sit together. You’d think that we would have done this before hand, but I guess it was just one of those lower items on the list that we never got to. Had Brittany booked the tickets she would have done it already, but alas, it was me who arranged the trip and I’m not as detailed as she is.

We have a 5 hour layover in Toronto, we have a lounge pass from from one our chase credit cards, but it said on their website that the lounge was under construction, we’ll see what we find. (100K sign on bonus for a chase reserve card, that’s nearly 2 free international tickets, and we get a pass. Good deal.) We’re about 30 minutes from arriving in Toronto, I’ll pick this up later today.

Picking this up later, mid flight to Paris…

We’re about an hour away from Paris. I probably got an hour of sleep in, though I’ve currently got hazel sleeping on me, and Bennett to my right taking up his and the free seat next to us, score! They both had a very hard time getting to sleep. I should have taken sleep more seriously last night, 2.5 hours wasn’t enough seeing that I’m having to land in Paris at 8am their time or midnight mountain time. Yikes. We land in Paris then we’ll meet up with Kenny, Dan and Family, and Matt and his family. From there we’ll catch a taxi or two to make our way to the Bois du Bologne indiegogo camping to set up camp. We shipped most the bikes to Paris so we’ll take delivery of those and get them set up. I’m hoping to get to sleep by 7 or so, we’ll need to do what we can to keep the kids awake so they can adjust to the jet lag quickly.